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  • Built in 1924 on Lot 3 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: Dr. Ernest Clyde Fishbaugh
  • Architect: Koerner & Gage (Henry G. Koerner and William J. Gage)
  • On August 5, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued Dr. E. C. Fishbaugh permits for a 21-room brick-veneered residence and a one-story, 22-by-34.5-foot garage
  • Dr. Fishbaugh would become notable as the personal physician to the oily Doheny and theatrical Pantages families and to actresses Mabel Normand, Jean Harlow, Dolores Del Rio, and Joan Bennett, among other high-profile names with which his appeared in the press during the 1920s and '30s. He was described in news reports surrounding the February 1929 murder of Edward L. Doheny Jr. as having arrived at Greystone, the recently completed Doheny residence in Beverly Hills and the site of the incident, after the time of Doheny being shot but in time to hear the shot with which the murderer, Hugh Plunkett—the oilman's secretary—killed himself. (Plunkett was described variously in early reports and in the voluminous dissection of the crime since as Doheny's secretary, his companion, as being "like a brother," or, to those of a more salacious turn of mind, closer, a persistent idea most likely a myth; a recent history of the case is here.) In early June 1937 Fishbaugh described Harlow to reporters as having only a bad cold and that she would soon be returning to the set of a subsequently scrapped version of Saratoga in which she was costarring with Clark Gable; the actress was dead of a gall-bladder infection and resultant uremic poisoning by June 7


As seen in the Times on February 18, 1929, two
days after being called to Greystone during
the final altercation between Edward
Doheny Jr. and Hugh Plunkett.


  • Dr. Fishbaugh's domestic life at 324 Rimpau Boulevard was scarcely less melodramatic than his professional associations. He'd married Mary Louise Parsly in Brookeville, Maryland, in July 1914, at which time he was associated with Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. After the honeymoon, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where Ernestine Louise Fishbaugh was born on February 16, 1917. In 1919 Fishbaugh bought a newly built house at 537 South Wilton Place, where the family remained until moving into 324 Rimpau Boulevard. The Fishbaughs led something of the typical upper-middle-class Hancock Park life at 324, which included the requisite Hawaiian vacations. In October 1926 Dr. Fishbaugh was listed in a display advertisement as being among purchasers of Lincoln cars from a new Hollywood dealership; his may have been the vehicle in which the doctor was seriously injured when he collided with another car at the corner of Virgil Avenue and Fourth Street on October 24, 1929—Wall Street's infamous Black Thursday. Perhaps the doctor was rattled, having just heard the news
  • For all their good fortune, the marriage of Ernest and Louise Fishbaugh began to unravel by early 1930. Dr. Fishbaugh was enumerated on the same day—April 12—in the 1930 Federal census at two different residences, one being 324 Rimpau Boulevard with his wife and daughter, the other in an apartment at the Town House at Wilshire and Commonwealth. As later coverage of the divorce would reveal, Fishbaugh had left the Rimpau household in March. On July 7, 1931, Louise received a divorce decree on the grounds of desertion. It seems that the randy doctor had been canoodling with a Mrs. Elsie Zoller Ogle of Pasadena, married and the mother of three sons, at the same time he was attempting to woo Mary Louise into a reconciliation with flowers and gifts. According to reports in the Times, the flowers and gifts were a sleazy tactic to induce Mrs. Fishbaugh to accept his proposal of remarriage; the proposal apparently came with the condition that she give up certain benefits she had received in their 1931 property settlement, including possession of 324 Rimpau Boulevard, which she hopefully agreed to in 1933. It seems that Dr. Fishbaugh was duplictously maneuvering to get his ex-wife out of the house and Elsie Ogle into it as his next wife, both of which he succeeded in accomplishing in due course. In May 1935 Louise and Ernestine moved to an apartment at 765 South Windsor Boulevard owned by well-known real estate investor Helen Mathewson. The scuttlebutt was enough for Dr. E. C. Fishbaugh to suffer the social ignominy of being kicked out of the Southwest Blue Book
  • Louise Fishbaugh was nothing if not tenacious when it came to seeking redress. On January 27, 1936, she filed suit to reinstate her 1931 divorce agreement and to throw out the property agreements she claimed Dr. Fishbaugh had coerced her into signing two years later; she also asked the court to grant her $250,000 in damages. The court "found that Dr. Fishbaugh 'at no time intended to remarry his ex-wife' but that she did not discover this until she was ousted from possession of their home in 1935." Louise did not get 324 Rimpau back but was awarded $50,000 in compensation. Louise and Ernestine went on to rent various apartments, both being mentioned in social columns from time to time over the years; Ernestine became an interior decorator and seems never to have married
  • For years, it seems, Dr. Fishbaugh could not shake Mrs. Ogle's attachment to the life her husband George provided for her in Pasadena, where the Ogles lived in a big house next door to that of architect Myron Hunt. George was an oil investor whose income no doubt trumped that of a mere physician, even if he ministered to movie stars. Dr. Fishbaugh was living alone, tended by a live-in maid and butler, at 324 Rimpau when the 1940 Federal census was enumerated on April 23—six days before his ex-wife won her $50,000 damage suit. (Fishbaugh identified himself as "S"—for Single—in the census when "D" for Divorced on the form was the more accurate descriptor.) While no record of the marriage has been found, it seems that the doctor had finally persuaded Elsie to leave her husband and children, though it appears that she may have had profound, indeed mortal, regrets
  • On April 2, 1942, the Times, under a sizable headline reading WIFE OF PHYSICIAN SLASHES THROAT WITH RAZOR BLADE, reported that "Mrs. Elsie Fishbaugh, 40, wife of Dr. Ernest C. Fishbaugh, prominent Los Angeles physician, yesterday slashed her throat with a razor blade in the bathroom of her home, 324. S. Rimpau Blvd., and died a short time later at Georgia Street Receiving Hospital." Dr. Fishbaugh told detectives that he had been talking to his wife in an upstairs bedroom [before going] downstairs to interview two prospective servants and returned in five minutes.... The physician said he saw blood flowing into the hallway from the bathroom [and] found his wife on the floor. A razor blade was in her hand. Fishbaugh told police that his wife had been in very poor health in recent months and was preoccupied with recent heavy stock market losses, though it seems she may have discovered that he was having an affair with a woman who was seven months pregnant. He also reported that he and Mrs. Ogle had been married in 1939, apparently off by at least a year; the report mentioned that his first wife had divorced him in 1931. Curiously, the California Death Index reports her as both Elsie Zoller Fishbaugh and Elsie Zoller Ogle; George Ogle reclaimed his former wife, dropped the taint of the Fishbaugh name, and her remains interred at Forest Lawn with a plaque reading "Elsie Zoller Ogle 1895-1942." George Ogle would be buried next to her in October 1949. As it turned out, Elsie, given to cutting, per various records, as much as seven years off her age, was not 40 at the time of her death but rather 46—unless she was 45, given that the 1900 Federal census gives her birthdate as December 1896; research always leads down a thousand foggy alleys
  • By 1946, Dr. Fishbaugh had married a third time and sold 324 Rimpau Boulevard. His most recent wife was born Hortense Darby, whose apparent résumé included having been a clothes buyer and the 1930 University of Wisconsin prom queen. She'd been married to and divorced from a Mr. Shook as well as to and from Chicago attorney Frank Mr. Cantwell. A curious record in Texas vital statistics has Hortense Darby Fishbaugh, with Dr. Ernest C. Fishbaugh listed as the father, giving birth to a Geraldine Fishbaugh on June 5, 1942, in San Antonio—a mere eight weeks after the suicide of his second wife. It seems that within those two months the twice-married, just-widowed doctor and the twice-married Hortense got married just in time to legitimize the child. Dr. Fishbaugh, who does not seem ever to have been a man to let the appearance of caddishness stop him from doing as he damn well pleased, found a match in Hortense, who boldly carved a place for herself as a socialite. The couple, along with Gerry, moved to an extravagant English-style house at 13535 Lucca Drive in the heart of the exclusive Riviera neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. Designed by Gerald Colcord in 1930, it was featured in The Architectural Digest the next year
  • What 324 Rimpau Boulevard desperately needed was a floor scrubbing and fresh air. The property was on the market in late 1943 asking $13,950—apparently a wartime price, if not a typo on the part of the Times
  • Investment advisor Morgan Maree Jr. opened an office in Hollywood in the depths of the Depression and began handling the financial affairs of film figures including Walter Pigeon, Dick Powell, David O. Selznick, Robert Taylor, and Humphrey Bogart. In 1932 Maree and his wife Betty bought a house at 2225 North New Hampshire Avenue in Los Feliz, where they would live with Andrew Morgan Maree III and Marianne, until moving to Hancock Park by 1945. On May 23, 1949, the Marees were issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for a 17-by-34-foot swimming pool at 324 Rimpau. Moving to 250 North Bentley Avenue in Bel-Air, the Marees left 324 by the summer of 1955
  • Relocating from 263 South Irving Boulevard in New Windsor Square, insurance executive John C. Cosgrove moved into 324 Rimpau Boulevard in 1955 and would remain for 13 years
  • Robert Bruce MacDonald and his wife née Barbara J. Wright were the next owners of 324 Rimpau Boulevard. On October 23, 1968, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mr. MacDonald a permit for a kitchen remodeling. The house is reported to have been sold for $95,000 on July 18, 1975 
  • Members of the family of New Orleans–born investment banker William Garrett Baker Jr. have now owned 324 Rimpau Boulevard for decades


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT